Arkadiusz ZUCHMANSKI

Chef : 1 restaurant Polish chef Arkadiusz Zuchmanski is at the helm of Apicius, one of Clermont-Ferrand's leading restaurants.

Presentation

Arkadiusz Zuchmanski grew up ina house filled with the delicious smells concocted by his grandmother and great-aunt. Driven by the love of the product passed on to him by his fisherman father, he passed his baccalaureate in cookery and his BTS in nutrition at the hotel school in Lodz, Poland. In 1991, he landed his first job at the city's Grand Hotel, but dreamed of French cuisine. "In Poland, there was a lot of talk about greatFrenchcuisineand its exceptional products. I thought I'd give ita try."

And so, three years later, he arrived inFrance. After just over a year in the kitchens of a bar in Puteaux, he left to work inAlsace, Lorraine and Brittany. While training in a restaurant specializing in fish in Vannes, his training master introduced him to compagnonnage.

He didn't do a Tour de France, but gained experience at L'Ébauchoir in Paris, with Yvon Levaslot, at Château Fonterpuis (Loiret) as head chef, at the Courtyard by Marriott in Neuilly-sur-Seine, the Marriott Renaissance in Paris La Défense... In 2001, after a spell as chef at the Hôtel Vendôme with Gérard Sallé, Arkadiusz Zuchmanski launched the Studio Café in Clermont-Ferrand with Jean de Chalendar. "I'd always wanted to have my own restaurant, so when I wasoffered thechance to work on a project from A to Z, it interested me."

In 2004, he took the helm at Le Bœuf Couronné, a meat restaurant in Paris. "It was very exciting, we were doing big services, sometimes over 100 covers per service." He continued his career at Yachts de Paris: "One of my Tour companions, Guy Krenzer, had taken over Lenôtre andofferedmea position as chef. At thesame time, I was helping to develop recipes for Lenôtre."

Then, in 2008, Arkadiusz Zuchmanski opened his first restaurant, in Clermont-Ferrand. The name? Apicius. "When Iwas at school in Poland, Ibought a book byApicius, a Roman gastronome who livedat the beginning of the 1stcentury BC .There wereonly 600 copies of it, so I was fascinated by his story." In 2016, it moved to a very contemporary setting next to the Halles Saint-Pierre.

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